Survey: Companies Court Document and E-Mail RisksSurvey: Companies Court Document and E-Mail Risks

More than half of executives say their firm's storage strategies won't stand up in court, and nearly three-quarters either view e-mail archiving as simply the creation of backups or they don't archive e-mail at all. These are two of the most startling conclusions of a survey released today by AIIM International.

AIIM's study, "The Role of ECM in Storage Decisions", explored the relationship between storage decisions and enterprise content management. Asked whether their storage strategies and policies would "survive scrutiny in a legal proceeding," 51.5 percent of all 597 respondents selected the multiple-choice answers "no" (4.5 percent), "more no than yes" (18.6 percent) or "50/50 chance" (28.4 percent). Among the 197 respondents who said their firms are "implementing an enterprisewide ECM strategy," 58.9 percent selected "more yes than no" (41.1 percent) or "defiantly yes" (17.8 percent).

Describing a "lottery" mentality, the report said, "there is an awareness of vulnerability, but a feeling that 'this could never happen to us.' While those who have implemented [ECM] are also somewhat cautions ... they are more confident than those who have not."

On the e-mail front, 50.0 percent of 603 respondents confirmed that their "e-mail is archived as part of the archiving process," a risky practice given that it's tough to mine such massive and overlapping stores. Plus, there's no underlying records management program that would eliminate spam and non-business-relevant messages while later allowing the legal expiration and deletion of messages in accordance with policies. Meanwhile, 22.0 percent acknowledged, "we don't archive e-mail." Results weren't much better among firms with an enterprise ECM strategy, with 47.0 percent pointing to backups and 23.0 percent admitting they simply don't archive e-mail.

"The responses relative to e-mail archiving reflect confusion ... regarding the differences between the terms 'storage,' 'archive' and 'backup,'" wrote AIIM President John Mancini, the report's author. "These terms tend to be used interchangeably, without understanding the differences in policy, practice and technology necessary to manage each effectively."

Although the term "Information Lifecycle Management" has been used to try to clarify the differences between storage, archiving and backup, only 38.9 percent of respondents confirmed they were "very familiar with the term and completely understand its meaning." More encouragingly, 77.7 percent of respondents claiming enterprisewide ECM strategies said records management and legal teams have "moderate," "significant" or "a great deal" of input on storage architectures, versus only 45.8 percent among respondents with no plans for ECM.